join table should be "baz" or "foos_bars" ?

<http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ThroughAssociations&gt; suggests, essentially, using "baz" while I believe that I've seen sources suggesting "foos_bars" and, I believe, "foo_bars". In particular, on this list, joining tables "foos" and "bars" with a many-to-many, "foos_bars" was recommended for the join table.

Why? Does it matter? What's correct?

thank you,

Thufir

Check out this ActiveRecord tutorial:

http://railsenvy.com/tags/activerecord%20tutorial%20video

Skip to about 2/3 of the way in and there is a section on many-to-many relationships that explains it quite well.

I always used foos_bars as a join table for a habtm association. I don't get the 'baz' but i think it references when you have a many to many relationship through something other than a join table?

with habtm, you have to use foos_bars. With has many :through, the join table in a model in its own right and so you can call it anything you want. When possible you should strive to find a 'proper' name for the join model. For example if your app was a forum type application, where users could subscribe to topics then a good name for the join model between users and topics would be 'subscription'

Fred

[...]

I don't have it in front of me, but in the "rails recipes" book, one of the recipes is for a habtm relationship. They have three tables, foos, bars, and baz. They don't use "foos_bars" to my recollection. That is, the name for the join table is unrelated to the name for either table. However, that's based on my recollection that it's a habtm relationship, but I think so.

-Thufir

I don't have it in front of me, but in the "rails recipes" book, one of the recipes is for a habtm relationship. They have three tables, foos, bars, and baz. They don't use "foos_bars" to my recollection. That is, the name for the join table is unrelated to the name for either table. However, that's based on my recollection that it's a habtm relationship, but I think so.

from the api documentation: "Unless the join table is explicitly specified as an option, it is guessed using the lexical order of the class names. So a join between Developer and Project will give the default join table name of developers_project"

This is my take on it:

OLD WAY - has_and_belongs_to_many :my_model

    This is an out of date technique to set up the many-to-many table. A major limitation to this method is that you cannot have any more fields in the table then the 2 joining fields, and the join table does not use a primary field key called 'id'. You can't sort joined fields very easily with this method.

This makes it sound like HABTM is obsolete. It isn't if you don't need to have attributes on the association, I think it serves perfectly way.

    This technique is very easy to set up. The table name is the plural names of the 2 joining tables, in alphabetical order, separated by an underscore. Table C and B would be BS_CS. The only 2 fields in the join table would be b_id and c_id.

And if the too records were foo and bar, the join table would be bars_foos, not foos_bars as has been mistakenly said at least once in this thread.

On the other hand, the link in the original post was to a description of :has_many :through and I think that the OP was confused between examples of HABTM and HM T.

What's the distinction between foos_bars and bars_foos please? A many-to- many isn't "directional", is it?

thanks,

Thufir

And if the too records were foo and bar, the join table would be bars_foos, not foos_bars as has been mistakenly said at least once in this thread.

What's the distinction between foos_bars and bars_foos please? A
many-to- many isn't "directional", is it?

No, but you've got to pick something and by default hatbm would pick
bars_foos (My mistake for saying foos_bars earlier - Time to brush up
on my alphabet :slight_smile: )

Fred

Yeh, a bit. Ooops :slight_smile:

-Thufir

Oh, because that's alphabetically sorted?

-Thufir